Lawyers Discuss Apple Co-Founder's Impact on IP Law
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin - The City's No. 1 Source for the Law Profession Lawyers discuss Apple co-founder's impact on IP law October 6, 2011 By Jerry Crimmins — [email protected] Law Bulletin staff writer © 2011 by Law Bulletin Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., showed the world the upside and the downside of closely protecting intellectual property. Jobs died Wednesday. He also made technology "cool" in the view of Chicago area intellectual property experts. "He embodies the true joy of being in the innovation business," said Arthur Yuan, executive director of the Chinese Intellectual Property Resource Center at The John Marshall Law School. "He makes using technology a very cool and very good and pleasant experience so that technology is no longer just a piece of hardware." "Steve Jobs was not only a visionary when it came to technological developments, but also when it came to intellectual property protection," said professor Doris Estelle Long at John Marshall. "Apple under Jobs aggressively used IP to protect its innovations. It often relied on newly emerging doctrines in its quest to translate its technological developments into legally protected market exclusivity. Thus, Apple Inc., was an early user of copyright to protect its software." Therein hangs a tale. AP:Steve Remembering Jobs told us Steve Jobs Steven G. Parmelee, partner at Fitch, Even, Tabin & Flannery, said in the early years of personal computers, "Apple what we needed maintained a clamp on their intellectual property so hardly before we knew anybody could make anything similar to a Mac." SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Steve Jobs saw Parmelee said Apple launched the personal computer the future and led the world to it. He moved market with Apple IIc and Apple IIe in the late 1970s and early technology from garages to pockets, took 1980s (a computer Apple history says was designed by the entertainment from discs to bytes and turned firm's co-founder Steve Wozniak). gadgets into extensions of the people who use them. But soon IBM got into the game with its Peanut, which used © 2011 by Law Bulletin Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission. the DOS operating system licensed from Microsoft, Parmelee 10 products that defined Steve Jobs' said. career NEW YORK (AP) — Steve Jobs had no formal IBM had relatively few patents on the Peanut because it schooling in engineering, yet he's listed as the began as a sideshow or "skunk works project" for IBM, which inventor or co-inventor on more than 300 U.S. then focused on mainframe computers, Parmelee said. patents. These are some of the significant products that were created under his direction: "Because there wasn't much protection on the Peanut, all kinds of other companies made compatible computers with the 7 products Steve Jobs got wrong Peanut and they could go to Microsoft and Microsoft would NEW YORK (AP) — Steve Jobs pushed the happily license DOS to them," Parmelee said. envelope many times when it came to product design, and the results weren't always pretty. "Apple was not that way. They kept it very controlled." Here are seven products created under his direction that failed commercially or functionally: As a result, "the PC market exploded and Apple's share shrank and shrank," Parmelee said, "and Apple was held up as In high-tech tributes, Apple fans mourn an example of how not to use your IP." Steve Jobs Steve Jobs was mourned around the world In the same vein, Timothy M. Nitsch of Levenfeld, Thursday through the very devices he conceived: Pearlstein LLC., said Apple came out with one of the first PDAs People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, or personal digital assistants in the 1990s. But the technology reviewed his life on Macintosh computers and was so closely held, "no one developed any applications on it," tapped out tributes on iPhones. Nitsch said. "Basically, it became a dinosaur. … Apple was always very locked down." Quote Box: Apple's Steve Jobs remembered Yet Jobs "made progressions in his career," Nitsch said. "He learned as he went along. He had early success. Then a series of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., failures got him kicked out of Apple." influenced the world with products from the Macintosh computer to the iPad. His death on Wednesday at age 56 prompted an outpouring of Jobs left Apple in 1985 and rejoined it in 1996. remembrances. When Apple brought out the iPhone, which became a Chronology: Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health tremendous success, the company allowed anyone to develop problems applications for the iPhone. "In my opinion, it was a very sharp change from their previous methods," Nitsch said. Key dates related to the health of Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs: Nevertheless, Apple under Jobs still was very aggressive and innovative in protecting its intellectual property even to the Interactive: Jobs Remembered » present, Long said. Full Coverage: Steve Jobs » Apple "tied its revolutionary iPod and iTunes together using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its protection of Digital Rights Management in a model that became a cornerstone for competitors," Long said. "While its efforts were not always successful" and Apple could not trademark the "i" in front of iPod, Long said, "Apple under Jobs could always be relied on to push the envelope on the legal front." Nitsch said Apple is effective legally even in procuring trademarks for fonts, such as the Chicago font. Jobs "really embraced the patent process and incorporating it into his business," Nitsch said. "There's almost an underground industry that would heavily monitor what Apple filed … trying to decide what the next Apple product would incorporate." "Jobs symbolizes what entrepreneurs can do if they're given the freedom to do it," said Larry E. Ribstein, professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in an e-mail to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. "We sometimes forget this huge upside when we focus on the downside of the misbehavior that can occur when corporate executives are not heavily regulated." On the blog Truth on the Market Ribstein also wrote today, "imposing more bureaucracy and investor democracy on business will mean fewer Steve Jobses. As we celebrate the incredible amount of value he created, let's remember the other influential entrepreneurs and try not to forget the conditions that enable them to flourish." "Steve Jobs was a terrible loss for the technology world and the IP community," said R. David Donoghue of Holland & Knight LLP, who writes Chicago IP Litigation Blog. "He was an unparalleled inventor and innovator. … Apple will no doubt continue innovating, but we will all miss Steve Jobs." By some counts Jobs' name is on 327 patents. But Yuan said in his view that narrowing the search with both Jobs' first and last names yields 73 patents and 57 pending applications. © 2011 by Law Bulletin Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission. http://www.chicagolawbulletin.com/.../pages/print.aspx?printpath=/Articles/2011/10/06/17242&classname=tera.GN3Article[10/18/2011 10:40:12 AM].